Money

From the NY Times, today's Paul Krugman editorial:

Meanwhile, the administration is still counting on Iraq's receiving billions of dollars in aid from other countries. Unless the U.S. makes major concessions, forget about it.

But the most important concession Mr. Bush should make isn't about money or control-- it's about truth-telling. He squandered American credibility by selling a war of choice as a war of necessity; if he wants to get that credibility back, he has to start being candid.

Yet in the speech on Sunday he was still up to his usual tricks. Once again, he made a rhetorical link between the Iraq war and 9/11. This argument by innuendo reminds us why 69 percent of the public believes that Saddam was involved in 9/11, despite a complete absence of evidence. (There is, on the other hand, strong evidence of a Saudi link — but the administration's handling of that evidence borders on a cover-up.) And rather than acknowledge that the search for W.M.D. has come up empty, he declared that Saddam "possessed and used weapons of mass destruction" — 1991, 2003, what's the difference?

So will Congress give Mr. Bush the money he wants, no questions asked? It probably will, but it shouldn't. Mr. Bush created this crisis, and if he were a true patriot he would pay a political price to resolve it. Maybe it's time for him to do a couple of things he's never done before, like admitting mistakes and standing up to the hard right. 

It's that last paragraph that has me thinking. While I agree that this is a problem of Bush's own making, we're all going to have to live with the consequences of his mistakes. If you buy the notion that getting Iraq back on its feet is vitally important, then you also have to be willing to pony up to do that, no matter who screwed it up. That means he probably should get the money he's requesting (as long as it's not all destined to line the pockets at Halliburton, ahem). The big question is how much screaming there will be about it. I don't have much hope from Congress, given past behavior, but hopefully we'll hear more from the guys who want to replace Dubya.

Posted by Jason at September 9, 2003 09:04 AM